April 12 —
President Bill Clinton
plans to target “loopholes” in current gun laws and to require even
more safety measures for firearms. “We really can’t do what we need
to do until there is national legislation passed by the Congress,”
Clinton told NBC’s Tom Brokaw as part of a town meeting at the
University of Denver as the one-year anniversary of the Columbine
High School massacre approaches. Brokaw interviewed the president
and several notable Colorado residents and politicians on the issue
of guns and safety.

‘You have to understand, the
NRA, if they can make a demon out of me, then they can raise more money.’
— PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

TOM BROKAW: Mr. President, what message do you bring on gun
control, not only to the citizens of Colorado, but to the rest of the
nation as well with these appearances?
President Bill Clinton: Well, first of all, I wanted to come to
express my support for the people of Colorado who are trying to put this
initiative on the ballot to close the gun show loophole. A bipartisan
effort lead by Governor Owens and Attorney General Salizar (phonetic
spelling) failed to get the legislation through the legislature so the
people are trying to put it on the ballot and I wanted to support it.
And secondly, I wanted to highlight the
fact that even though Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, California and
other states are moving to increase gun safety, we really can’t do what we
need to do until there is national legislation passed by the Congress to
close the gun show loophole, require child safety locks, promote safe gun
technology and stop importing the large capacity ammunition clips that
make a mockery of our assault weapons ban.

But you think that this issue has
become so highly politicized, especially in a presidential election year,
Governor Bill Owens, for example, didn’t want to appear in this hour with
you — he’ll be appearing later tonight on MSNBC — that it’s become so
politicized that it’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve any consensus in
this year?Actually, I think the fact
that it’s an election year increases the chances that we can get something
done. If it weren’t an election year, there’d be no way because the — in
Washington at least — the influence of the NRA is so great that even
though some people are afraid of them at election time, they know the
public is for our common sense prevention measures overwhelmingly.
So I think in a funny way the fact that
it’s an election year might help us to pass it, especially since, you
know, I’m not running for anything, so I’m just out here trying to do what
I think is right.

It seems that one of the real hang-ups is this whole question of
how long the waiting period should be at a gun show for a background
check. The NRA and other people who are critical of your position say they
would be willing to take the 24-hour waiting period. You’ve been holding
out for 72 hours. Here’s the problem,
and there may be a way to split the difference, but 70 percent of these
checks can be done in minutes. Over 90 percent can be done in 24 hours.
The problem is that the less than
10 percent that can’t be done within 24 hours, where you need three days,
they have a rejection rate of 20 times the rejection rate of the other 90
something percent. So their position puts them in I think a totally
untenable position. They’re basically arguing for the group that is most
likely to have criminals in it. So there’s
got to be a way to do the checks, clear them, let the people have their
guns and clear, and still hold those that can’t be cleared.
And you know, in rural areas, for example, I’ve
actually been to very rural gun shows, because that’s the kind we mostly
had in my state. There’s got to be a way to find a common place to deposit
the gun and the check, if it’s over the weekend. And then do the
background check and send the gun to the gun owner and the check to the
seller.

So
there may be some room for compromise in the 24 versus 72 hours, if you
can find — if in effect, what we would call an escrow for the
gun?Sure. There are practical problems
in these rural gun shows, but they don’t approach the costs to society of
not doing the background checks. And the problem is, you know, again I
don’t have — once the background check is
done, people ought to be able to get their guns, but the problem is, if
you don’t have the provision for three days, for the small percentage of
buyers that can’t be checked in a day, then you’re giving up a huge
percentage of the people that have a criminal background.

Let’s talk about the
larger picture when it comes to safety checks and gun controls and the
question of gun control versus gun safety. If you put all of that on the
table, and then you look at what happened in Columbine High School — and
we know what was in the minds of Harris and Klebold. We’ve heard the tapes
— there are no laws in the world that would have kept them from carrying
out that act. Well, you may be right.
The young woman who provided one of the guns said that if she had been
subject to a background check, she wouldn’t have purchased the gun at the
gun show. But you may be right about that. There’s been a recent study
showing that a lot of these terrible instances don’t necessarily fit a
profile; that young people nearly always give some heads up to some peer,
and never do it to their own families. But
one of the things we do know is, since we passed the Brady bill and
increased gun enforcement at the same time, a half million people who are
felons, fugitives and stalkers, haven’t gotten their handguns.
Gun crime is down 35 percent since I took office and
we got the lowest homicide rate in 31 years, so we know we can do better.
You can’t — there is no society that can prevent every tragedy, every
outrage, but you do if you have sensible prevention measures, you save
more lives. That’s what this is about. It’s not being perfect, it’s about
not making the perfect, the enemy and the good.

‘A BALANCED
APPROACH’

‘There’s no one answer and
there’s no easy answer. What we’ve been addressing is how do we keep kids
connected.’ — DIANA
HOLLANDLittleton Community Task
Force

You have a big deal on the table at Congress, you want to get
additional money for enforcement of gun laws, 1,100 new prosecutors, 500
new ATF agents, $10 million for smart-gun research. This comes at the end
of your eight years in office and the NRA has been after you for a long
time about enforcing the gun laws that are already on the books.
Well, they say that, but they haven’t
endorsed this measure yet. And look at the
facts, since I’ve been president we’ve increased federal prosecutions by
16 percent. We’ve started operations like the one in Richmond and here in
Colorado. We have increased by two years the average sentence of a
violator of the gun laws. We’ve increased enforcement. That is not an
argument not to have prevention. My
argument with the NRA is not on enforcement. My argument is that guns
can’t be the only area of our national life where we don’t have a balanced
approach. I agree with them, we should do more to educate young people
about gun safety. I agree that the media and parents and communities and
schools have responsibilities. But this shouldn’t be the only area of our
national life where we don’t have sensible prevention measures.
We would never think of applying this principle to
airport metal detectors, to taking all the seat belts out of cars or, you
know — that’s what my problem is.
Prevention ought to be a part of our strategy and the evidence of
the Brady Bill is it works, it drives down crime and it saves lives, and
we ought to close the loophole. That’s what I believe.

One of the interested
observers we have here is Gerry Whitman, who’s the police chief — or the
acting police chief of the city of Denver. Mr. Whitman, one of the claims
that the NRA makes is that around the country law enforcement officers are
unhappy with the federal government for not doing enough to enforce the
federal gun laws. Is that your judgment?GERRY WHITMAN, DENVER POLICE CHIEF: Most recently in Colorado,
we partnered with the U.S. attorney’s office in Project Exile, and I’d
like to thank the president for making that happen.
I want to see it go further though. This year, we’ve taken 18
gun cases to the U.S. attorney, and they’re prosecuting 14 of those cases,
and we anticipate long sentences. I think
the consistency we want to see nationally in the police community is
exactly that. We have a patchwork of different ordinances in the city, and
nationally the same thing. To protect the officers on the street, we need
to know what to expect; we need consistency in the laws. What happens
when you have a gun show here in the Denver area? In a number of other
communities, they say the crime rate goes up — crimes committed with guns.
Does that happen in Denver?WHITMAN:
Well, in 1989 the city council and city government put into law an assault
weapons ban in the city, so we don’t have gun shows in the city
itself. I haven’t noticed any increase as a
result of the gun shows outside the city limits with the crime rate in the
city of Denver.

PASSING THROUGH BACKGROUND
CHECKS

And we also
have in the audience Doug Dean, who is the majority leader in the Colorado
state house of representatives. You are among those who defeated your own
governor’s gun control bills that he put before the house. Why did you do
that?DOUG DEAN, COLORADO STATE HOUSE
MAJORITY LEADER: Well, Tom, we just didn’t believe that it would have had
any effect on the tragedy at Columbine. The president referred to — a few
minutes ago — to Robyn Anderson, the young woman who purchased those guns.
Well, Robin Anderson would have passed the
very background check that the president is supporting, so it really
wouldn’t have had any impact. This young woman was forced to show her ID
before she purchased a gun, but in our legislative responsibility is to
pass legislation that actually will go to the root of the
problem. Most Americans don’t believe it’s
gun control; they believe it is parents being actively involved in their
children’s upbringing. CLINTON: I agree
with that. She would have passed the background check. What she said was,
if she’d been subject to one, she probably wouldn’t have bought the
gun. But let me point out — again I say, you
can’t solve — you can’t refuse to vote for a law because it’s not perfect
and it won’t solve every problem. Last year
we had a study done by the Department of Justice and the Department of the
Treasury involving over 300 sellers at gun shows and without background
checks. Thirty-four percent of them resulted in sales of guns that were
later used in serious crimes, a total of fifty-plus thousand gun crimes
committed. Now, if there had been background checks, those would not have
occurred. So just to say, “Well, they
wouldn’t have solved every problem, therefore we won’t do it,” I don’
think that’s a good answer. If the Brady
bill works, if you believe in the Brady Bill, if you accept the fact that
it’s kept a half a million felons, fugitives and stalkers from getting
handguns, then it would by definition work to have the same background
check at the gun shows. And let me just say
one other thing. Everybody says enforce the law, enforce the law, enforce
the law. The more we prosecute violations of the Brady Bill, the more we
enforce the law, the more illegal people will turn to the gun shows to buy
their guns unless we close the loophole.

Mr. Deane, a question that I have
for you, 80 percent of the Coloradans in a survey about gun laws in this
state said they really did want to crack down on gun shows, they wanted to
crack down on sales to 18-year-olds. All of this is possible. And they
wanted background checks for gun shows. So are you representing the people
of Colorado when you defeat those very measures?
DEANE: Well, I’m certainly representing my district and the
vast majority of the people in my district don’t support that.
And, Mr. President, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m
skeptical about a young woman, whatever she’s going to say when she’s
trying to get herself out of trouble. I don’t buy her claim.
But the people of Colorado, I think once we — going
back to your question, Mr. Brokaw — once they understand what all is
involved in this, and if they are — we’re going to talk to the people. And
talk to them, “Are you giving up some of your fundamental Second Amendment
rights by agreeing to this?” I don’t think it’s going to end up passing
with an 80 percent margin, if it passes at all.

But, well, let me just ask you, so
I understand perfectly well your position personally. You think that there
can be unlicensed dealers at gun shows and that background checks should
not be required at gun shows and that guns can be sold to 18-year-olds at
gun shows. You’re in favor of all three of those points.DEANE: Eighteen-year-olds are adults who are allowed to
serve this country in the military, and President Clinton can send them
off to war, so I believe that they are adults and I don’t believe in
creating two classes of adults. I believe that if we go down the road
toward regulating every private transaction of a firearm, then we’re going
to have government registry basically of firearms owners and that concerns
me.

ADDING NEW LAWS

BROKAW: Mr. President ... [pointing to large stack of documents]
these are just some of the federal firearms regulations that we already
have on the books. If you could add just one or two that you think would
change the current climate in this country, what are the two priorities
that you have at the end of your term? CLINTON: I would close the gun show loophole, because the Brady
bill has worked superbly. It’s given us a 35 percent drop in gun crime and
a 31 year low in the homicide rate, and kept a half a million people —
felons, fugitives, stalkers, from getting handguns. That’s the first thing
I’d do. And then, the second thing I would do is to require safety
provisions for children. I also believe that the loophole in the assault
weapons ban should be closed. We banned assault weapons and then we still
allow the import of these large capacity ammunition clips.
But I think that child safety and keeping — doing more
to keep guns out of the hands of criminals through preventive measures
that haven’t delayed by a day or an hour 100 going to the deer woods,
anybody going to a sport shooting contest, any law abiding person buying a
handgun for safety at home, hasn’t done any of that. I think it is a tiny
burden to pay to give lots of people their lives back. That’s what I’d do.

But do we
have to get beyond the laws and get to a dialogue as well about the place
of violence in our culture?CLINTON: No,
no, that should all be a part of it. I mean, I think that the media has a
responsibility here. I’ll say again, community schools and families have
heavy responsibility. I think when we’ve got a lot of guns out there, we
should do more to teach young people how to use them safely. But you can’t
say that guns are the only area in our life because of the Second
Amendment where we’re not going to do prevention.
You know, the same people that are arguing now we can’t close the
gun show loophole said to me six years ago when I signed the Brady bill
that it wouldn’t do any good. It would just burden people because all the
law — all the criminals bought their guns at gun shows. They didn’t buy
their guns at gun stores. It turned out it wasn’t right. Prevention makes
sense in every area of our national life. That’s my message and my
belief.

A VICTIM FROM
LITTLETONOne of the places in
America where this dialogue has been going on with a very, very heavy
price of course is Columbine, Colorado. And Lance Kirklin is with us today
— he’s one of the students who was shot in Columbine. And Lance and his
family also still like to use guns. Lance, what have you learned about
guns in the last year having been a victim of a gun shot?
LANCE KIRKLIN, COLUMBINE VICTIM: Well, I mean, it’s
not guns who kill people, it’s people who kill people. You know, I mean,
you don’t see a gun just jump off the table and start shooting people.
It’s the people that have it, you know, in their possession and it’s their
mind that does the crime.

What would you change, however, in the teenage culture, if
you will, or in the culture of young people, not just in Columbine but
across the country in terms of their attitudes about violence and the use
of guns? KIRKLAND: I don’t know.

Do you
think that they are open to change? Do you think that they learn — I mean,
you go out hunting with your father, for example, right? And shoot guns
with him and you’ve learned from him. But how many other young people only
know about guns from video games or from some violent movie and don’t
really know what the impact is?
KIRKLAND: I think a lot of people my age know about guns from movies
and video games and stuff, but they also know the other side of it, that,
you know, they are dangerous and they also can be used for hunting and, I
don’t know, good, I guess.

Would you be uncomfortable if the gun-show loophole
was closed? KIRKLAND: Kind of, yes.

You would
be uncomfortable with that. KIRKLAND:
Yes.

SEARCHING FOR RESOURCES

‘My argument with the NRA is
not on enforcement. My argument is that guns can’t be the only area of our
national life where we don’t have a balanced approach.’ — PRESIDENT
CLINTON

Let’s ask Dave Thomas who came to be known nationally, as well,
who is the district attorney for the county in which Littleton resides,
about how his attitudes have changed toward guns in the last year in
having to deal with the tragedy there? DAVE THOMAS, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Well, my attitudes have changed
a little, but actually in a sense I agree with Lance, with one exception.
The access to guns that people have certainly increases the lethality of
the acts that they may commit, and that was extremely graphic in what
happened at Columbine High School. I think,
in agreeing with the president, I think the Brady bill has worked, I think
it’s worked, in fact, better than we anticipated. We’re overwhelmed both
federally and now at the state level with people who are attempting to buy
weapons in violation of that law. My
concern is having the resources available, both prosecutorial,
investigative and in terms of our databases to fully implement that. But
it certainly doesn’t make any sense to me that a person cannot go into a
gun shop, a federally licensed gun shop and buy a weapon, but they can go
down the street to a gun show and purchase one.
And the president’s right, the more we publicize the issues the more
people are going to do that. So we need to close that loophole and we need
to provide resources so that they can be investigated, and as we’re going
to do and have been doing in Colorado, prosecute aggressively those who
violate the law.

We also have, and in that very area is Diana Holland, who’s the
co-chair of the Littleton Community Task Force. The task force is
officially neutral on the whole question of gun control, but I wonder, Ms.
Holland, has your work in effect been impeded some by the emotional
divisions that gun- control debates bring to the table?
DIANA HOLLAND, CO-CHAIR, LITTLETON COMMUNITY TASK
FORCE: The work of our Littleton community task force hasn’t been impeded,
because we all left our political and personal agendas at the back door.
This group pulled together; it was elected officials, parents, business
people, clergy, students, and decided we wanted to see what we could do to
help really answer all the problems we saw. There’s no one answer and
there’s no easy answer.

‘Historically, there are a
lot of people that had to have a license to carry a concealed weapon. No
one ever thought that interfered with the Second Amendment.’
— PRESIDENT CLINTON

We had hoped — in our next hour, which will play tonight — to
have Wayne LaPierre, who is a very conspicuous officer of the NRA, appear
with us, and he had accepted it but then cited a scheduling conflict so he
won‘t be us later tonight. But we do have in the audience, I know, some
people who are not only enrolled members of the NRA, but are outspoken
proponents of the NRA‘s position on a lot of things.
Bob Ford (phonetic spelling) is the president of the Rocky
Mountain Arms, Inc. He is a gun dealer and he joins us now. We have Mr.
Ford right here. Mr. Ford, Wayne LaPierre
has said two rather provocative things about the president in addition to
the Charlton Heston commercial that we just saw. He said the president has
blood on his hands as a result of what happened to the coach that was
tragically shot in a hate-crime shooting in Northwestern, and he said that
this president wants a certain level of violence in America to further his
political agenda. Do you agree with
that? BOB FORD, PRES., ROCKY MOUNTAIN
ARMS, INC.: No, I don‘t. I believe, as the president has indicated here
today, there‘s been a little bit too much rhetoric on both sides. We need
to come together. I believe our industry
has been working closely for a number of years with the BATF to try to
make our laws clearer and understandable, and what we do need to do is
what has been successful in the United States. And we‘ve got college kids
here; even they know you don‘t go out and drive drunk. We need to drive
that same message home to the felons in America: that if you use a gun,
you are going to go prison. There is no deals, and Alex Hunter only exists
in one county.
And what about gun shows in places like Colorado and across the
American West, and across the American South, for that matter, where
they‘re so popular? You‘re a regular gun dealer and represent gun dealers.
Do gun shows unfairly compete with people who go out and set up their shop
in a brick and mortar operation? FORD:
Unfortunately there is not enough funding for the BATF. The green book you
have next to you, states that if you sell guns for the purposes of making
money, you are a gun dealer and you are supposed to have a license. There
are casual people that go to the so-called gun bazaars or flea markets
that do sell, perhaps, their private collection or something, are from
another state, but these people are engaged in business. They should be
called on that, come up — walk into the gun shows and say, hi, we‘re with
the ATF, we see that you‘ve been at this gun show, you were at the gun
show last week and you made a reservation for next week. Here is an
application for a license. You either get a license or you are out of
business. (OFF-MIKE)
But this administration raised the standards for licensing.
And here in Colorado, just this week after I arrived, many Colorado
Republican legislators were saying, they‘ve made it too hard to get a
license. They only raised the price from $10 to about $30 and put some
additional standards in there. Wasn‘t that the appropriate thing to do or
not? QUESTION: Well, there is always a
two-edge to the sword. The back side of that is there are a number of
dealers at these gun shows that used to have federal firearms licenses,
and they have been engaged in now disposing of their personal inventory
for a number of years. The ATF needs to go back and say, hey, the deal is
over. If you‘re going to still sell guns for money, you‘re going to get a
license and you‘re going to do a background check. There is not a dealer
in this country that does not object to the background checks, because we
don‘t want crooks having guns anymore than anyone in this room. Were you
surprised when the Colorado legislature defeated the attempts to tighten
the laws governing gun shows? QUESTION:
No, I was not. Our — members of our Colorado legislature are responsive to
their constituents. Thank you very much.
Matt Bai is a colleague from “Newsweek” magazine and he has been covering
extensively this whole question of the gun culture in America, the gun law
and the political debate that has heated up across America — Matt.
MATT BAI, NEWSWEEK: Well, Mr.
President, the NRA in a letter to gun dealers last week, called you the
most anti-gun president in history. That may or may not bother you, but
along the same lines of what we‘ve been watching, there are a lot of gun
owners and gun dealers who believe that you won‘t stop until you get an
outright ban on handguns and that whatever you get, you‘re going to want
more. I‘d like to know what specific provisions of the ones that you‘ve
outlined today it would take for you to go away and leave the gun
companies and the gun dealers alone?
CLINTON: Well, first of all, I have said specifically that I would
not support a ban on handguns. You may know that the major newspaper in
Washington, D.C., The Washington Post, has actually advocated that. And so
we were all asked about it and I said, No, I wouldn‘t support that. I
would go further than my proposals here. I also think that it‘s all right
to register these sales the same way we register cars, because what I‘m
trying to do is improve the ability of law enforcement to trace weapons
when they‘re used in a crime, and none of this in any way interferes with
the Second Amendment. You know, historically, there are a lot of people
that had to have a license to carry a concealed weapon. No one ever
thought that interfered with the Second Amendment.
So my basic view is I‘m for anything that will increase our
capacity to prevent guns from going into the wrong hands, but I‘m not for
preventing law-abiding people for having the guns that they have a right
to have to hunt, to sport shoot or if they choose to protect themselves in
their own homes. I do think, in addition to
that, we should invest a lot more in this smart gun technology. We will be
able — within three years, we will have guns on the market that can only
be fired by their lawful owner. And I think we ought to have internal as
well as external child trigger locks. I believe that. That‘s what I — and
I believe when we do that, you will see a much safer country. I just — and
I think that if you look at the evidence here, there‘s been no assault on
hunting, there‘s been no assault on sport shooting, but we do have a safer
country than we did because I‘ve taken on these fights. And so I think
that the fears are unfounded. We should take — instead of getting into big
verbal battles, we ought to look at the specifics of every proposal and
debate it and decide whether it‘s right or wrong. TRACKING THE
WEAPONS

‘I would oppose any effort
to say that people couldn‘t have firearms in this country.’
— PRESIDENT CLINTON

As you know, many people believe that if you register every
handgun that‘s going to be a national registry and the government someday
is going to show up at your door and say, Give me your guns. CLINTON: Well, I don‘t agree with that but
that wasn‘t my proposal. I think first of all, that‘s impractical, because
there are already over 200 million guns out there. And now, that scares a
lot of people. The truth is that the vast majority of them are in the
hands of collectors and law abiding hunters, and sports people. There are
too many that are kind of floating around on the streets in the criminal
culture. But the answer to that, I think, is aggressive local buy-back
programs, which we try to support. But if you register new gun sales then
they could — the guns could more easily be traced in the event of a crime.
That‘s all I‘m interested in. I would oppose
any effort to say that people couldn‘t have firearms in this country. You
know, maybe others disagree, I suppose, but it‘s probably the culture I
grew up in and I‘m still a part of it. But I also think that the people —
most of the folks I grew up with, if I have a chance to talk to them and
they understand we‘re trying to save kids lives and trying to prevent
crime from happening in the first place, and it doesn‘t burden their
ability to do what they want to do lawfully with their guns, will support
these specific measures. That‘s the direction I think this debate ought to
take.
Well, you‘ve tried to make it a ... state option, as well. Would
that be the answer that gun owners would be more inclined to trust their
state governments than the federal government? The federal government can
provide the appropriate incentives for the states to install those kinds
of laws? CLINTON: Well, they probably
would. But to me, how it‘s done is not as important as whether we have
done everything we possibly can. Look, let me just say this, when I
started in ‘93, as president, we had a rising crime rate. Most people
didn‘t think you could drive it down. Now, the Congress not only passed
the assault weapons ban and the Brady bill, they put 100,000 police on the
street; they put more resources in law enforcement; they did more to help
local agencies, as well as to strengthen our federal efforts. And crime is
at about a 25-year low, the murder rate at a 31-year low, but I won‘t be
satisfied until America is the safest big country in the world. And if I
were running the NRA, I would love — I‘d have a whole different take on
this. I would be for all this prevention business because I would want to
prove that a country where a lots of people hunt, sport shoot, and have
guns for their own protection, could also be the safest country in the
world. So I would have a totally different take on this. I might not raise
as much money through the mail...
(LAUGHTER) ... but I think it‘d be
better, a better approach.CLINTON, NRA
PRESIDENT?

‘There is no such thing as
an absolute if you mean it can never be restricted.’ — PRESIDENT
CLINTON

Let me just be absolutely clear about this. You‘re going to be
out of work in less than a year. Does that mean that you‘re thinking about
running for the NRA presidency? CLINTON:
I think, you know, somehow I think I‘d have a better chance of getting
elected to the school board at home than I would to the NRA
presidency. (LAUGHTER)
But what I — I‘m just trying to say, I don‘t think this —
again I will say, let‘s go back to what the gun dealer there said. We
don‘t need to turn this into personal animosity, we need to debate every
single one of these issues, bring out all this stuff and figure out how we
can make America the safest big country in the world. That‘s really what
we all want, isn‘t it? Wouldn‘t you like it if your country were the
safest big country in the world? I mean, that‘s what we all
want.

I
think we have a question from the audience for you, Mr.
President. QUESTION: I have a question
I‘d like to direct to the president. Sir, do you believe the Second
Amendment is absolute or something that can be limited by gun-control
legislation? CLINTON: Well, there is — there
is no such thing as an absolute if you mean it can never be restricted.
The First Amendment, which most people believe is the most important one,
let‘s say freedom of speech, Supreme Court has said there‘s a limit on
freedom of speech. Pornography is not protected. You can‘t shout “fire” in
a crowded theater when there‘s no fire. Freedom of religion. The courts
have upheld that people who want to join the United States military, for
example, may not be able to have beards even if their religion says
they‘re supposed to have one. So all of these amendments have to be
interpreted over time in terms of the real circumstances. If you look at
the history of the Second Amendment and what led to its adoption, there
is, it‘s my view, nothing in there which prevents reasonable measures
designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and kids. To say that
criminals have an absolute right to get guns, and we‘re just going to
throw the book at them if we catch them, but we can‘t prevent them from
committing a crime in the first place, I think is wrong.A
VICTIM’S FATHER

‘I think that Littleton‘s no
different than any other community. There are differences of opinion of
how we deal with this terrible epidemic of gun violence.’ — TOM
MAUSERfather of Columbine victim

Tom Mauser is here ... from Columbine. He lost his son at
Columbine, and he appeared, obviously, at the State of the Union speech,
and you came out here to speak to this group today. Mr. Mauser, have you
been surprised in the almost year now since the tragedy at Columbine and
the loss of your son, by the divisions in the Colorado community
generally, and specifically in Littleton, about how to resolve these
issues of violence in America and especially what we do about
guns? TOM MAUSER, FATHER OF COLUMBINE
VICTIM: No, I haven‘t been that surprised because I think that Littleton‘s
no different than any other community. There are differences of opinion of
how we deal with this terrible epidemic of gun violence. And where do you think it
will lead to in Colorado, given how the Colorado legislature voted this
time? MAUSER: Well, clearly where it‘s
leading to right now is that we‘re taking — my organization, SAFE Colorado
is taking a ballot initiative to the people to close the gun show
loophole, and I think clearly the polls show that people see that it‘s a
reasonable, common-sense law.
We also have in the audience Richard Gephardt, who
represents your party in the House of Representatives. There‘s a letter,
Mr. Gephardt, that we got a copy of just today. It may come as some
surprise to you. It‘s signed by Henry Hyde, as the chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee, and John Conyers who‘s the ranking Democrat on that
committee, and they‘re sending it to Orrin Hatch, saying they want to
request a juvenile conference meeting as soon as possible because they
think that they have agreed on some terms of where they can get to on
closing these loopholes, for example on gun shows, John Conyers signing
off on a 24-hour check. Does that have any chance of
passing? REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO),
HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: Well, I hope that that can happen. We‘ve been
trying to, on a bipartisan basis, get this conference to meet and get them
to bring out something that we can get a vote on in the House and the
Senate. I‘m very optimistic that we can get this done, and as the
president has said, we all have our eye on safety, and this bill would
help.
Twenty-four hour checks would be OK with you?
GEPHARDT: If it can be done feasibly, if we think that we can
catch the people. As the president said, even under the 72-hour rule, 90
percent of the people pass the check; we‘re only inconveniencing about 10
percent, and a large portion of them are the people that we‘re trying to
stop from getting guns. So if we can work it out to get a 24-hour check,
clear everybody or not clear everybody in that period of time, that‘d be
great. Would you sign that bill?
CLINTON: Well, I want to see the details. But I almost certainly
would sign anything that had the support of both Mr. Conyers and Mr. Hyde,
and therefore got a majority of both our caucuses. Because, you know, we
may never get a perfect bill. And I don‘t know what they mean by 24 hours.
Because John Conyers had offered Henry Hyde 24 hours before, but he wanted
some provision for this group — small, small group for whom there‘s a very
large rejection rate. And so I don‘t know where they settled. I want to
see the details. But if we could get a big bipartisan bill to come out of
the House that would save people lives, even if I thought it weren‘t
perfect, of course, I would sign it.A BILL WORTH
PASSING?

‘If we could get a big
bipartisan bill to come out of the House that would save people lives,
even if I thought it weren’t perfect, of course, I would sign it.’
— PRESIDENT CLINTON

Would it be worth trying a conditional bill? We‘ll try the
24-hour check for two years, put a time limit on it, and if it‘s not
working we‘ll come back to it again, just so that we get some effort to
begin to close the door on gun shows.
CLINTON: Well, I think we ought to do the very best we can on that.
The one thing I did not want to do that was suggested by some is that we
just go for the child trigger locks and leave the gun show loophole alone
altogether just because it was almost impossible to come back. So if we
can make some progress, obviously I‘m open to it. But I think that at even
— without regard to party, what is uncomfortable is everybody would like —
because a lot of these gun shows are held on the weekends and people are
passing on. And as the gun dealer — the gentleman pointed out, a lot of
these people are just getting rid of their own personal stock. And I‘ve
been to gun shows way out in the country, you know, where you‘re 10-15
miles from the nearest town and they‘re passing through. So everybody
would like to minimize the inconvenience. The real issue is, what do we do
about this very small percentage of people that don‘t clear within a day
and do have a 20 times higher rejection rate. But I can‘t believe we can‘t
find a fix for that, so we can let everybody else go in a day. I — look —
the ones that clear in 30 seconds, I‘m for letting them go in 30 seconds.
You know, I don‘t want to — the government should never be in the position
of imposing a burden for which there is no benefit. So, you know, I can‘t
believe that we can‘t work this out. And I‘m encouraged by this letter.
Speaking
of that, Smith & Wesson recently came to you and volunteered to put in
place a number of guidelines that rankled other gun manufacturers in this
country, and not only gun locks, but they‘re not going to allow their guns
to be sold at gun shows, they‘re not going to allow multiple handgun sales
in the course of a fixed period time. The NRA has already pointed out
that‘s a foreign company, it may be up for sale. Are you going to put the
pressure on other gun manufacturers to follow the Smith & Wesson model
or are you going to leave it to them to do what they want to?
CLINTON: Well, first of all, I think they
did a good thing. Second, let me tell you exactly what they did because I
think it‘s important and you might want to go back to some of the people
in the audience. What they said was they would not allow their guns to be
sold at gun shows unless all the people selling at the gun show did a
background check. Then they said they would require trigger locks, both
internal and external, and within three years would have smart gun
technology. And they said that they would not continue to distribute their
guns through dealers that had a bad record. Another thing, a lot of these
gun dealers get an unfairly bad name. You know, an extraordinary
percentage of the guns sold to criminals by gun dealers are sold by a tiny
percentage of the dealers. Most of the dealers are perfectly law abiding
and very vigilant. So all Smith & Wesson said, Hey, I want to get in
and support this process. And what I‘m going to do is encourage other
manufacturers to do the same and I think you‘re going to see a lot of city
and state governments that buy a lot of guns encourage other manufacturers
to do the same. Now, there is some evidence that a lot of the other
manufacturers are trying to gang up on Smith & Wesson, which I think
is a mistake. Again, what did they do that was wrong? All they did was to
promote prevention and they‘re in the business of selling guns. They‘re
obviously not trying to ban guns. They‘re making money selling
guns.
There‘s somebody in the audience who has some pretty strong feelings
about that. Paul Paritis (phonetic spelling) is a gun dealer here in the
state of Colorado. You‘ve decided, Mr. Paritis, not to sell the Smith
& Wesson weapon? PAUL PARITIS, GUN
DEALER: Yes, that‘s true. My store no longer sells Smith & Wessons.
What‘s happened is we‘ve created some financial difficulties where it‘s
not an incentive to sell Smith & Wesson. For example, some of the
agreement which hasn‘t been talked about is allowing more inspections by
ATF. One of the things that hasn‘t been said is a ATF inspection doesn‘t
last one day. An ATF inspection can last a whole year. I‘ve been through
that, not because I had bad records or that any number of guns have been
traced to my store that were used in a crime. In fact, I take a great deal
of pride that my store has the fewest number in my community. But yet,
because of political activism, I was picked out.Why do you think that
selling Smith & Wesson weapons would bring more ATF inspections?
PARITIS: Well, it‘s one of the things
that dealers have to do. There‘s a number of other things. Taking — I
carry over 400, 500 guns in my store. One of
the things that they are requiring us to do is, we may have to remove
every gun from the shelf and lock it up in a safe every night. Well, you
take two employees — me and my wife usually, to spend a couple of hours to
unpacking and putting guns up and then the next morning taking them out,
that‘s a lot of money lost. You know, the states, a short time ago, were
very upset about federal unfunded mandates. Now it‘s businesses,
especially small businesses like mine that are receiving federal unfunded
mandates. &nbsp